breaking the habit
by the blanket
Summary: [SasuSaku] I'm scared as hell to want you, but here I am, wanting you anyway. Sakura, Sasuke, and breaking habits. And maybe, just maybe, learning new ones.


**title: **breaking the habit  
**pairing: **SasuSaku  
**summary: **"I'm scared as hell to want you, but here I am, wanting you anyway."

**notes: **AREN'T MY TITLES INSPIRED? Written after I watched _Grey's Anatomy_. LOVE. I can't believe there may or may not be any new episodes. WHAT DO I DOOO? D:

Sorry, I'm spastic right now.

** disclaimer:** none of it is mineeeee. not Naruto, and certainly not the line from Grey's (in summary) that inspired this piece. harharhar.

* * *

She wakes up in a half-empty bed and an open window, and is not surprised. 

The clothes that had been scattered on her hardwood floor the night before are folded in a neat stack, corners on top of corners on top of corners, in pin-straight lines, all in a row.

_(she wonders if he organizes his emotions so cleanly, and thinks, woodenly, yesyesyes, because he is a creature of habit, of unbreakable continuity, and she—_

_she is Sakura)_

It rests neatly at the foot of her bed, and she almost screams.

His, of course, are missing from the pile, for Uchiha Sasuke could hardly be caught wandering the village naked, now could he?

This happens too often, and she is tired of waking up to only the remnants of warmth left on her skin from where his hands had touched her.

Her footsteps echo against her living room floor, and she slips into

_(kunoichi-man-eater, no-man-needer)_

her knee-high, boots.

_No more, _she thinks, as she steps into sunlight.

-

She vaults the wall that guards his former home,

(and wishes she could slip into him as easily)

and glances for a moment at this shattered kingdom.

There are spots on the wooden walls of the stores, the houses, the too-empty homes that once housed a clan.

Sasuke, she knows, come here to remind him of his goal, his vengeance, his so-called destiny. He is a masochist in many ways, and this just the one.

She brushes the sadness away, and steps lightly to his door.

It is unlocked,

_(and oh, she thinks, the metaphors would kill her had she had the time to articulate)_

and so she enters with a click.

After a few moments, she slips out.

Empty.

-

The training grounds are next, and instead of a brooding self-proclaimed avenger, she finds an antithesis.

"Hey Sakura-chan!"

Naruto, she thinks, is infectious in the way smiles are, so what can she do but comply?

"Hello, Naruto. Have you seen Sasuke-kun?"

The blond-haired, blue-eyed orange blur squints, and Sakura wonders when she started thinking in color.

"Oh yeah! He _was_here, earlier. And he said you'd be looking for him. He told me to tell you to go home."

"…He did, did he?"

_(arrogant, selfish prick, why why why does it still ache?)_

"Yeah!"

She smiles brightly.

"Thank you, Naruto."

-

She checks Ichiraku, the missions office, even the Academy, just to spite him. But even she must concede defeat when she finds his apartment devoid of any living presence besides a few green houseplants.

She unlocks the door to her home, and steps in, shutting it softly behind her.

Before anything, she decides, she needs water.

And possibly food.

Talking to empty air, and searching for someone who quite obviously does not want to be found, is tiring in more ways than one. Right now, however, she is more concerned with the physical.

She opens the door to her kitchen and—

"Did that moron not tell you to go back home when you saw him?"

there is an Uchiha Sasuke sitting at her kitchen table.

Even saying it in her mind does nothing but induce hysterical giggles.

He quirks a brow at her.

"What are you laughing about?"

And his voice brings her back to the present, back to her unmade bed, and the feeling of waking up alone.

"Sasuke…this…"

She looks at him, green eyes clear, and slightly sad.

"This can't continue, Sasuke…I can't…you can't expect to be—" Her eyebrows furrow as she searches for the words.

She loves him, and this she knows. She loves him, and he is unsure, and this cannot be enough. He left her once, asleep not-by-choice, on a stone-cold bench under the shadow of moonlight, and—

_(now, now that he is home, he does the same. _

_He leaves in small ways and she breaks a little at each parting.)_

But she loves him, and she will fight for him. One last time.

One way or another, it will end today.

"I—won't pretend to know what you're thinking. I can't. And, I had every intention of getting over you. Really, really I did."

She smiles softly, sadly.

"But you wouldn't let me, would you?"

His dark eyes watch her, but he does not speak.

"I was so scared, after the first night that you would leave again. That I wouldn't be enough…again. And then I woke up, and you were gone, and, I…knew."

She exhales, unsteadily, but still, he is silent.

"I wanted to hate you, and I tried. So hard. But every time, I just—I couldn't. So it happened again—_we_ happened again—and every time, I'd wake up o a bed that felt two sizes too big."

She looks into his eyes, begging without words for him to understand what she is saying.

"I'm scared, Sasuke. I'm scared as hell to want you, but here I am, wanting you anyway." She chuckles, but it is a hollow echo of her usually genuine happiness.

There is silence for a few moments. She swallows past the lump in her throat, and damns his inscrutable face to the darkest pits of hell. Then, slowly, awkwardly, he stands, and reveals a dampened paper bag that she hadn't noticed sitting next to his feet.

He clears his throat.

"I brought breakfast. But it's probably cold now. That's why I left earlier."

She stares at him, green eyes wide with a tremulous sort of hope.

And there are no words after, no proclamations of undying love, no promises of 'til-death-do-them-part.

But there is an understanding, a handful of his clothes and weapons tucked into half of her closet, and that—

that is enough.

* * *

harhar. SasuSaku is subtle love, for serious. I hope I portrayed that well enough here. 

Thoughts? Comments?

I would love to hear them.


End file.
